


The night of a thousand eyes

by orwellianoccultist



Category: American Gods (TV), American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Oneshot, Spoilers, this is shit lmao dont read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-18 21:16:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19342813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orwellianoccultist/pseuds/orwellianoccultist
Summary: man of many hats, though master of none.speaking a foreign language with a foreigner's tongue.An Ode to Mad Sweeney.





	The night of a thousand eyes

**Author's Note:**

> context: this is a sort of fusion of both the tv show and the novel. that is all.

_The bearded man lit his cigarette. “I’m a leprechaun.” he said._  
_Shadow did not smile. “Really?” he said. “Shouldn’t you be drinking Guinness?”_

_“Stereotypes. You have to learn to think outside the box,” said the bearded man.“There’s a lot more to Ireland than Guinness”_

_“You don’t have an Irish accent.”_  
_“I’ve been over here too fucken long.”_  
_“So you **are** originally from Ireland?”_  
_“I told you. I’m a leprechaun. We don’t come from fucken Moscow.”_

_American Gods - Neil Gaiman._

-

Ha. What a joke that had been. The Irishman who'd gone so far from home that nobody could even see where he'd come from originally anymore. A fucken king he'd been 'n all before Good Old father Church had shown up on his doorstep.

 

He felt it taken away from him with time, his identity slipped through his fingers like grains of sand on the shore by Ballycastle. First he had been the sun, then a king, then little more than a warrior, and finally a leprechaun. A little green man more associated with Lucky Charms than any real trait of power.

 

When the rest of the Old Gods began to suffer from feeling forgotten, from their following decreasing, their power waning and finding their new forms caging in their limitations. He'd already had centuries to get used to shrinking. Ever since 401 AD. When you live like that you start to forget what you've lost. It becomes hard to keep track of all the slights from lady fortune set upon ya.

 

He'd been in America for over a century now and yet he still felt the pull at his heart to return to his motherland. Still felt a call from those golden glens. It hurt him more to think that there was equally no one waiting for him there as here, so he didn't. Tried to think that him still being here must be for some reason or another, there must be a faithful few even if it was 'Sir Charms The Leprechaun' they believed in and not Suibhne mac Colmain, the Cursed-Mad-King-Turned-Wanderer. Or Lugh, God of Rightful Kings, Storm and Sunshine.

 

Then of course the bastard had to go nick his coin hadn't he. Not-so-little Gobshite.

 

He could have left her there, Mrs Moon, roadkill would have been a fitting end for someone who's last act in life was that of giving road head. Hell he should've left here there the damn woman didn't deserve her second chance in the slightest. He knew for a fact that if she'd known that her taking of his coin was killing him it wouldn't have stopped her for a second.

 

But let it not be said that Mad Sweeney didn't have honour yet. And he knew those green hills he longed for were well out of his reach alive, but not dead. A part of him wanted to die, a part of him had wanted to die for a very long time.

 

It had been easy forgetting what he had lost, what was harder was the remembering. It aches like no other pain he'd experienced. So many lives so many loves. You don't feel it as much when it's happening to you. You don't notice much difference between being a King of Gods and then a King, King to Leprechaun is a step but still close enough to be manageable. Looking back from Leprechaun to King of Gods though? That fucken stings.

 

Sitting on the steps of Ibis and Jacquel's parlor, he toasted to the air, to who he had once been, to the identity he himself had never held onto long enough to save anything but the guilt from destruction.

 

"Sláinte" he said, before raising the bottle to his lips and drinking himself to his death. He heard the Bloody Dead Wife walk up behind him and couldn't resist a wheezing laugh that stopped her in her tracks. The worst luck in the world was of course your ticket to life arriving too late.

 

"Your fault Dead Wife" He stuttered, falling back onto the floor, "should've given me my damn coin while it could have saved me."

 

And with that he was finally gone.

 

Mad Sweeney was not mourned by many, unsurprisingly. And while Shadow may have felt some remorse for his actions, his wife felt only a twinge of sympathy for the man, before the coin keeping her alive abruptly fizzled out of power and dropped out of her chest onto the ground with a 'ping'.

 

Served her fucken right, he'd would’ve thought if he could.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is terrible, I failed the Q-stop-writing-things-at-3am challenge I know. But honestly this is just as much about my identity as it is Sweeney's, when i first read that passage about him in the book I emphasised straight away as someone who's a generation or two off 'authentic' Irish but been raised semi-patriotically. Too Irish to be English (due to the Very Irish BirthnameTM) and too English to be Irish (no accent, etc). So uh, even though I hate this piece now it felt fitting to put it out there somewhere. Just to say I'm here because god knows it's rare enough to get a good Irish character in mainstream media let alone on who also feels a dubious sense of belonging and identity.
> 
> A guide to irish terms I've used:  
> Ballycastle - Northern irish small town. some of the sources on sweeney's many identities believed him to originally be from ulster so I didn't see any point limiting him to just the republic.  
> Gobshite - insult meaning what it sounds like i guess? your gob is your mouth im sure you can take it from there.  
> Sláinte - cheers.
> 
> So the fusion here is that the method of death is ripped from the books but it's set in the movie!verse? and when he dies in the novel he makes it very clear he blames Shadow. but he never met Laura so he couldn't really blame her? Which is why I swapped them over for this version. Also I know that she clearly cares about him in the show because she gets pissed and like?? kicks a table?? wow sis. But my current working theory is that a part of the soul is lost upon return to life and looking at Laura's life? Well she didn't really have much empathy to start with did she.
> 
> Anyways I'm going to post this now and promptly forget about it/pretend I never wrote it. But feel free to hmu on tumblr if you so choose. (links on my profile)


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